Cambridge.University.Press.Language.and.Gender.Feb.2003.
Language and Gender Language and Gender is a new introduction to the study of the relation between gender and language use, written by two of the leading experts in the field It covers the main topics, beginning with a clear discussion of gender and of the resources that the linguistic system offers for the construction of social meaning The body of the book provides an unprecedentedly broad and deep coverage of the interaction between language and social life, ranging from nuances of pronunciation to conversational dynamics to the deployment of metaphor The discussion is organized around the contributions language makes to situated social practice rather than around linguistic structures or gender analyses At the same time, it introduces linguistic concepts in a way that is suitable for nonlinguists It is set to become the standard textbook for courses on language and gender penelope eckert is Professor of Linguistics, Professor (by courtesy) of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University She has published the ethnography Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School (1989), the book Linguistic Variation as Social Practice (2000), and many linguistic articles sally m C connell-ginet is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, Cornell University Together with Ruth Borker and literary scholar Nelly Furman, she edited and contributed to Women and Language in Literature and Society (1980) and with linguist Gennaro Chierchia, co-authored Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics (1990), which has recently been revised for a second edition Language and Gender PENELOPE ECKERT SALLY McCONNELL-GINET Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521652834 © Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet 2003 This book is in copyright Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published in print format 2003 - - ---- eBook (NetLibrary) --- eBook (NetLibrary) - - ---- hardback --- hardback - - ---- paperback --- paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Contents List of illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing gender Sex and gender 10 Learning to be gendered 15 Keeping gender: the gender order 32 Masculinities and femininities 47 Gender practice 50 Linking the linguistic to the social 52 Changing practices, changing ideologies The social locus of change 55 Linguistic resources 60 Analytic practice 79 A matter of method 84 53 Organizing talk 91 Access to situations and events 92 Speech activities 98 Speech situations and events 103 The pursuit of conversation 109 Conversational styles and conversationalists’ character 122 Making social moves 129 Speech act theory 130 Functions of talk and motives of talkers: gender oppositions 133 v vi Contents Speech acts embedded in social action Beyond conversation 156 144 Positioning ideas and subjects 157 ‘‘Women’s language’’ and gendered positioning 158 Showing deference or respect? 160 Backing down or opening things up? 167 Who cares?: intensity and engagement 176 Calibrating commitment and enlisting support 183 Speaking indirectly 188 Saying and implying 192 Case study 192 Aspects of meaning in communicative practice 195 Presupposing: gender schemas and ideologies 203 Assigning roles and responsibility 207 Making metaphors 213 Mapping the world 228 Labeling disputes and histories 228 Category boundaries and criteria 232 Category relations 242 Elaborating marked concepts 246 Genderizing discourse: category imperialism Genderizing processes 259 New labels, new categories 261 254 Working the market: use of varieties 266 Languages, dialects, varieties 266 The linguistic market 271 The local and the global 273 Language ideologies and linguistic varieties 276 Case study: standardization and the Japanese woman Gender and language ideologies 281 Gender and the use of linguistic varieties 282 Access 288 Whose speech is more standard? 292 Fashioning selves 305 Stylistic practice 306 Style and performativity 315 278 vii Contents Legitimate and illegitimate performances One small step 325 Where are we headed? 330 Bibliography 333 Index 357 320 Illustrations 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 US cuts of beef 235 French cuts of beef 236 Polarised oppositions 243 Default background, marked subcategories 243 The social stratification of (oh) in New York City (from Labov 1972c, p 129) 272 Percent negative concord in Philadelphia by class and gender (casual speech) (from Labov 2001, p 265) 296 (dh) index in Philadelphia by class and gender (casual speech) (from Labov 2001, p 265) 298 Percent reduced-ing in Philadelphia by class and gender (casual speech) (from Labov 2001, p 265) 299 Raising of /ay/ among jock and burnout boys and girls 301 Height of /æ/ before /s/ in Philadelphia by class (as represented by occupational group) and gender (from Labov 2001, p 298) 301 viii Acknowledgments Our collaboration began in 1990 when Penny was asked to teach a course on language and gender at the 1991 LSA Linguistic Institute at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Sally was asked to write an article on language and gender for the Annual Review of Anthropology We decided to combine these projects into a joint effort to rethink approaches to language and gender, and particularly to bring together our work in quite different areas of linguistics Penny’s focus in linguistics has been on sociolinguistic variation, and she was employing ethnographic methods to examine the embedding of linguistic practice in processes of identity construction Sally came to linguistics from math and analytic philosophy, and has divided her career between teaching and research on language and gender, especially the pragmatic question of what people (as opposed to linguistic expressions) mean, and on formal semantics Both of us, in our individual writing and teaching, had begun to think of gender and language as coming together in social practice Penny was then at the Institute for Research and Learning in Palo Alto, California, where she worked with Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger Their notion of community of practice provided an important theoretical construct for our thinking about gender, about language use, and about how the two interact We owe special gratitude to Jean and Etienne Each time we thought we’d finished working together, a new collaboration would come up Our Annual Review article appeared in early 1992, and we presented a greatly abbreviated version as a talk at the Second Berkeley Conference on Women and Language In 1993, we gave a public talk at the LSA Institute at the Ohio State University that grew into the paper in the volume edited by Mary Bucholtz (who was a student in our Santa Cruz course) and Kira Hall in 1995 Early in 1997, at the International Conference on the Social Psychology of Language, we participated in a session organized by Janet Holmes on communities of practice in language and gender research With Miriam Meyerhoff, Janet edited a special issue of Language in Society, based on that session and including a paper from us ix